Indian Oil’s Paradip refinery starts product dispatch in Odisha

The first ever dispatch of consignment of products from Indian Oil’s Paradip Refinery was flagged-off today by Union Petroleum & Natural Gas Minister Dharmendra Pradhan in a simple ceremony held at Odisha’s Paradip.

The consignment comprising of High Speed Diesel (Diesel), Superior Kerosene (Kerosene) and Liquefied Petroleum Gas (LPG) are produces of the trial run before the refinery becomes fully functional.

The project, in all likelihood, would be dedicated to the nation by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in January. The minister today held talks with IOCL (Indian Oil Corporation Ltd) executives to work out details about the Prime Minister’s visit.

“We started the commercial production of diesel, kerosene and LPG starting today. Petrol and ATF production are yet to commence. The project will be fully operational by the time it is dedicated to the nation,” said Pradhan speaking to reporters at Paradip today.

With the commissioning of few of its process units, Indian Oil (IOCL) is ready to supply products in small quantity from its 15 MMTPA state-of-the-art Paradip Refinery, as per IOCL executives.

Built at cost of Rs. 34,555 Crores, Paradip Refinery is designed to process broad basket of crude including cheaper high sulfur heavy crudes and with an overall Nelson complexity factor of 12.2.

As per IOCL, the whole complex is planned to become fully operational in an integrated manner in soon.

Many first-time technological features such as flue gas desulphurisation facilities, vapor recovery system from jetty loading etc are being implemented at the refinery branded as IOCL’s flagship. These features will ensure environment friendly operation of the refinery with minimum impact to the nature.

Interestingly, the INDMAX Unit (4.17 Million Metric Tonnes Per Annum) is based on the indigenous technology developed by IOCL’s Research & Development. It is considered a major step towards indigenous technology development in the country.